Date line November 1934, the place Eddie Cantor’s radio show, the event “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” debuts. John
Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie had no idea this night and this song would change their lives. By Christmas of that year they had sold 400,000 copies of the sheet music for the song (100,000 ordered the night after it aired), making it an instant Christmas classic.

The earliest recorded version was by banjoist Harry Reser and his band with Tom Stacks on vocal in 1934 and followed the next year by Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra. In 1963 The Four Seasons charted with it and it has been recorded in Spanish by Luis Miguel. It is also another tune that Rankin – Bass made into a TV special, this time with Fred Astaire doing the singing and narrating the hour long special.

It is this special that introduced me, and probably many from my generation to the song, but it was the rock and roll version by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band that made it cool when I was a teenager. Recorded live in 1978 and released in 1985 as the b-side of “My Hometown,” it is one I look forward to breaking out each year.